2 China Dissidents Granted Asylum, Fly to Vancouver

Two Chinese women fighting a legal battle against the Hong Kong government's plans to send them back to China have been granted asylum by Canada, the Canadian Commission in Hong Kong said Wednesday.

The two dissidents, 29-year-old journalist Liu Yijun and 25-year-old computer programmer Lin Lin, left Hong Kong on Wednesday afternoon aboard a Canadian Airlines plane bound for Vancouver, ending nine months in the British colony's Victoria Prison on charges of illegal immigration.

According to lawyers representing the two, Liu says she was an activist during China's 1989 pro-democracy movement and a dissident poet for a southern China publication, while Lin says she offered Liu shelter in China's southern city of Shenzhen before they both were smuggled into Hong Kong.